by Carol Jenkins

Xn

Xn might be the shortest poem possible between two letters, a mathematical metaphor for poetry, shorthand for a process that takes something specific and transforms it into something more intensely itself.

Jenkins’ second collection begins pre-big bang, and proceeds, democratically investigating life. Is she mining the everyday for the sake of linguistic high jinks, or hijacking language to celebrate where we’re at? Here we find a penchant for the absurd, a playful elucidation of everything from the concept of zero to the history of burnt toast, a subversion of historical methods, road trips and set theory, butter and death. Wry and lucid, wide-ranging and witty, this is exactly what you need to read.